Речи новосковане и друге у речнику Дошеновићеве Численице
Newly Coined and Other Words in the Dictionary of Došenović’s Численицa

Summary/Abstract: Jovan A. Došenović (Počitelj, Lika 1781 – Buda, 1813) was a poet, translator, author of a book on mathematics, published in 1809 in Buda. His book, Čislenica (Численица или наука рачуна – Arithmetic or the Science of Mathematics), was also used as a calculus textbook. The content of Čislenica from the point of view of mathematics is completely elementary: the subject matter is divided into nine chapters, which the author calls Сјеченија/Сƀчения. At the end, there is a glossary entitled – Reči novoskovane i druge upotrebljajeme od mene u čislitelnoj nauki (Glossary of Newly Coined and Other Words Used by Me in the Science of Mathematics), which is of great interest to Serbian culture and the history of language. Došenović cited and explained the meaning of 102 words: most of the entries were, of course, from the field of mathematics or trade. In addition to his trying to make a contribution to the collecting of terminology in the fields of trade, banking, and mathematics, he thought that these terms should also be explained by other languages: for most terms, he gave a translation in both German and Italian, and for some words he gave explanations only in Italian. Apart from the two dominant language templates, he explained eighteen words by using terms from Serbian language. The word our (нашки) was used in the syntagm our language – meaning Serbian language. The language issue was important for Došenović, he realized that it was not enough to be only declaratively committed to the national language, but that our alphabet must be reduced to an acceptable size, suggesting that 28 letters would be sufficient. One of the forms of expressing patriotic loyalty in Doshenovć’s time was the use of national language: his purism was reflected not only in the choice of the title of his book, but also in the choice of terms: he always gave priority to Serbian words. When pointing to a new term, he also applied the receptive style of exposure, i.e. prescript mode. As much as he could, he introduced to Serbian many rules preventing the use of foreign words without any need. In addition to concepts related to mathematical operations, most other terms contained in his glossary are related to trade, that is to say, goods and flow of money, but there are also words from the general lexical fund. There is an inclination for cultural borrowing that involves borrowing words from other languages for the purpose of naming new concepts, objects and ideas, but he translated and adapted those words to Serbian language. His new terms mostly did not stabilize in Serbian due to several reasons: the lack of standard linguistic system, lack of developed mathematical terminology, and the lack of established terms in our country. He nurtured the reformatory character of patriotism, which was characteristic of the followers of Enlightenment in our country.

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